1844-1869: Thomas Andrews - the Hidden Years

According to her death certificate, Thomas' mother, Martha, was 32, much the same age as his father, 34, when he was born in 1844.

In November 1845, when he was 18 months old, his father died of a "lingering" illness for which he had presumably gone to Dublin for treatment. Where did he die? Is it documented?
Perhaps through the auspices of the archbishop, his mother was found a post as matron of the Armagh County Infirmary at the end of 1845. This post lasted only a year. Are there any papers in the Archbishop's Office about this?
From November 1846, Martha was without work. One assumes she was supported by her father, William Rogers, which would make sense if this was indeed the proprietor of Armagh's chief hotel.
Thomas received "a private education" - who from? Who would be a likely teacher?

In 1850 when Thomas was 6, his grandfather William Rogers sold up his possessions in Armagh. He is said to have moved to Dublin - did he?

In 1854 when Thomas was 10, his mother remarried, to John Bell, a successful farmer in County Louth. How did they know each other?

One clue is that one of the witnesses at the wedding was John Dransfield - a Newry hotel-keeper. Was there a connection in the hotel trade?

In 1862 when Thomas was 18, his stepfather John Bell was evicted. What happened next? (How old was John Bell? There were dozens of John Bells in the area at the time!)

By the spring of 1869, when Thomas was 25, he was clerk to the Crumlin Road Gaol

How does all this fit?

Drewing conclusions

Writing about the two Frederick Lewis Drews has cleared my mind - so much that  I now favour a third Frederick, born in Canterbury in January or October 1830, given a medical discharge from the 64th Regiment of Foot in 1856.

His army discharge papers describe him as a carpenter. The army background fits with becoming a civil guard at a convict prison. The 64th Foot were in India in 1851, so this explains his absence from the 1851 census.

There is a moral there somewhere, so I won't jump to any conclusions!

The Mystery of Frederick Drew

In 1861, Frederick Drew, aged 30 and born in Canterbury, was a civil guard at the convict prison at Portland. Civil guards were responsible for security while the convicts were out of the prison, working in the quarries or building the breakwater for the large naval harbour. They were armed, and had usually come from an army background.

From his wife and children, it is certain that this is the same person as the Frederick L Drew living at 35 Cross Street, Battersea in 1871 - a carpenter (aged 40, but born in London), the Frederick Drew at 58 Dashwood Road, Battersea in 1881 - a railway porter (aged 50, born in Canterbury), and the Frederick Drew at 122 Stewarts Road, Battersea in 1891 - a carpenter (born in Canterbury, but aged 64).

This Frederick married Sarah Aldon at Kennington on 20 September 1857. He gave his father as John Drew, and his middle name as Loderwick. On his death certificate, (aged 73 in 1899) his second name is recorded as Lewis.

A Frederick Lewis Drew was baptized at St Pancras on 18 February 1827, son of John and Sarah Drew. (Frederick's second daughter was named Sarah).
A Lewis Frederick Drew was baptized at Margate on 9 August 1829 , having been born at Portsea on 10 September 1828, son of George Drew (a coastguard officer) and Caroline his wife.

Neither of these quite fit. George Drew went on to be the superintendent of a convict settlement in Tasmania; the son, Lewis Frederick, was at the Bluecoat School in London from 1836 to 1844, and later was apprenticed in the merchant navy. The Frederick Lewis born in St Pancras has not been found in the 1841 census, and neither of the two can be found in the 1851 census.

So which of them was "our" Frederick? Or was there yet another?

Edwin Paul Corin in London

We believe that Edwin P Corin (misdescribed as Edward by the enumerator) was a warehouseman, and was at 4,5 and 6 Love Lane in Aldermanbury on census night, 7 April 1861.

We know that on 31 July 1862, Edwin was working for Hirsch Oppenheimer at 16-18 Gutter Lane, in the City of London.

We know that he married Eliza Knight at Christ Church, Battersea 0n 8 April 1862, by archbishop's licence dated 31 March, and that at that time he lived in St John's Road, Battersea. (In 1864, they moved to Forest Hill.)

So when did Edwin get to London, what induced him to leave Penzance.

Are there clues in the Love Lane address?

Is there any information in the archbishop's licence?

Scope for further research...

Thomas Castell - Edward Baker and Margaret Castell revisited

There is a possibility that Edward was the father of Margaret's illegitimate daughter, also Margaret, who was born on 6 July 1813 and baptized the next day at St Clement's, Sandwich.

Edward was baptized in Wingham in April 1766. He had been declared bankrupt in 1810 as a result of his partnership with John Stevens (the husband of a cousin). (However, his salary as clerk to the Collector of Customs in Sandwich was £100 p.a.)

At the end of 1812, he would have been 46. It was in the summer of 1812 that he moved to a large house in Sandwich, near where one of Margaret's relatives lived.

He finally married Margaret in July 1822, when he was 56.

In August 1815, Margaret's father-in-law formally disinherited her because of her infidelity. The will stated that Margaret's husband had been out of the country on service - the implication is that he was abroad between 1812 and 1815, and also that he was still alive in 1815.

In 1822, Margaret described herself as a widow.

So what happened to Thomas Castell?

Jeremiah Andrews and James Gibson

The reference in the Belfast News-Letter of 14 July 1835 to Jeremiah Taylor Andrews marrying Martha Rogers seems to assume readers will be familiar with "Rev James Gibson", who conducted the wedding. But there appear to have been no James Gibsons in the Church of Ireland at this time.
However, there was a Presbyterian minister of this name associated with the Lisluney, now Lislooney, Meeting House in County Armagh - on the border with Monaghan. A Rev. James Gibson was also active in the Deaf and Dumb Society in Magherafelt. Records at PRONI only go back to 1845. Do any other records of Lislooney survive? Did either Jeremiah or Martha have any connection with Lislooney, or with James Gibson?

The Shelford Mystery

Philip Knight (1806-1979) was the youngest of eleven children of John and Mary Knight, and born and baptized on Foulness Island. He left the island before the end of the 1820s and worked first as a carpenter and later as a building developer in London - active in developments at Battersea, Stoke Newington and Forest Hill.

When a rich landed proprietor, he settled in Forest Hill. So did his daughter, Eliza, and son-in-law, Edwin Paul Corin. Edwin named his house Shelford. Shelford is presumably the area, with farm and creek of the same name, in the west of Foulness. (Edwin's son Arthur also named a couple of houses in the Sydney suburbs after the same place.)

This seems to suggest some sort of connection between the Knights and Shelford, but they were not freeholders there. What records might show them?

The strange case of Jeremiah Andrews

Well, I know Irish research is not easy, but I'm really on a path to nowhere.

Start with your oldest living relative, and pump them for information, says the rule. That was my mother, and she could tell me a lot about her mother, and her mother's mother, but not so much about her mother's father, and even less about the family's origins. "Your great grandfather was a Prison Governor in Cork, and the family originated as horse breeders in the North." That was all she knew.

Not a lot to go on, but enough to piece together the life of my great grandfather, Thomas Andrews, from about 1870 onwards - his marriage in Waterford, his promotion to deputy governor of Waterford Gaol, and subsequent promotions to Deputy Governorships and Governorships around Ireland - all well documented from the mid-1870s, once the old county bridewells had been merged into a national Prison Service.

And when they invented pensions, he gave his date and place of birth, as Armagh in February 1844. Being Church of Ireland, he was baptized at the cathedral there, the son of Jeremiah Taylor Andrews.

So what happened between 1844 and 1870? Where was he brought up? How did he get into the prison service?

Fortunately the local press has a bit of information. Jeremiah Taylor Andrews was an auctioneer. Between 1843 and 1845, he placed advertisements in the Armagh Guardian and the Newry Gazette, about sales in his auction rooms in English Street, Armagh. But then he disappears. I assume he moved away, but where to? A book giving biographies of famous Cork people around 1910 says that Thomas was "educated privately", so there's no sense in looking at school records. The newspapers tell us nothing about his father's auction business after 1845. His mother died in Waterford in 1882, but there is no trace of Jeremiah's death - presumably before the start of civil registration in 1864 (and yes, I've checked England, Wales and Scotland)

Jeremiah Taylor Andrews is a distinctive name, you'd have thought. The only insight into him, apart from his auctioneering in Armagh, is his wedding, announced in the Belfast-Newsletter in July 1835 - to Martha Rogers "of Armagh", with the marriage celebrated by "the Rev James Gibson". But no church in Armagh has such a wedding in its registers, and no directory of the Church of Ireland, the Presbyterians (or the Roman Catholics, for that matter) mentions a Revd James Gibson. Jeremiah is not in Griffiths. So where was Jeremiah before 1843 and after 1845?

Help!! Possible lines of enquiry?

Coriniana

Between being born in 1873 and marrying in 1902, Walter Charles Corin

• sailed before the mast to Australia,
• went farming in Canada, jilting a fiancée there,
• worked for a firm of legal publishers,
• was apprenticed to Speaight and son,
• and took photographs in St Moritz (and Andermatt?).

What do we know about these escapades?

Pettman and Baker of East Kent

Margaret Castell (1813-1887) married Thomas Pettman in Islington in 1832. They were both "of this parish". Was Thomas really living in Islington in 1832?

Thomas Castell, who fought in the Napoleonic Wars, died between 1815 and 1822. When? Where?

Edward Baker joined the customs service around 1786 in Sandwich - is there any record of this?

In 1841, Thomas Pettman dedicated The Missionary Hymn to the Revds T Fisher and Adams, and for the benefit of "the organ fund". Thomas Fisher, aged 34 in 1841, lived in Preston by Wingham and was a Methodist minister. What is known about him? What organ? There was a Methodist church in Hardres Street...

Before 1844, Thomas' children were baptized at St Peter's Thanet - thereafter at St George's Ramsgate. Does this indicate that he moved then?

Thomas had songs published by Coventry and Hollier (Moonlight 1835) and Cocks (Goodbye 1840) - is there any record of these?

Watts of Bunmahon

Who was mentioned in Richard Watts' will, dated 1875? The original was lost in the Four Courts fire. Does anything else remain?

William John Watts married Lucy Lavinia White in 1900. They had four children, all alive in 1911.
Who was the fourth, and what happened to them all?

When Anna Maria Watts (1858-1928) emigrated to Boston in 1885, she was "of Piltown, Ireland". What was she doing there?

Matilda Watts (1848-1909) married Robert Clement Dawes in Dublin in 1892. She left on her own for Massachusetts in 1902. Why alone, and what was Robert doing? Where were they at the time of the 1901 census? And where were Robert's older children in 1911 (and Fanny Cuolahan, too)?

John Downs was of 3 Frederick St., Limerick in 1877 when he married Elizabeth Watts. His father Thomas was a shopkeeper - was this also in Limerick?